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Dev: Dark Tower | Too Difficult for Most Players

Hi Devs,
I am starting a thread because every day, the biggest complaint from multiple players is that Dark Tower is unfairly difficult. Personally, I haven't made 7 wins in Dark Tower since you increased the diffculty a few updates ago.
Some observations from myself and players:
* Opponents are higher rank than Brawl matchups - sometimes the enemy hero has +100 HP
* AI receives epics and legendary options more frequently than the player - often two legendaries in a row
I am asking other players to add their comments.
Thanks in advance for listening to the community.

I haven't been able to win a dark tower battle in days. I start the first few rounds getting weak units that get 1 hit killed by the opponents starting units and by the time i get some stronger units to play its already too late the enemy warlord is still at full hp and mine is down to a few hits and the enemy has so much damage out on the map that even my highest health heros die in 1 turn.

Dark Tower has an issue for years. The idea of using all of your units are good but the execution needs to polish. Dark Tower used to be called "Survival". The idea of it is to go as far as you can in each day. However, I wouldn't call it unfair but rather call it uncertain. Of cause, in the game, luck is heavily involved. But player should be able to plan something. We need to balance "Luck" and "Strategy" a bit.
I would suggest to allow player to set up a Dark Tower squad but this squad has some rule. For example 1 Legen, 2 Epic, 3 Uncommon max are allowed. Or you can have a "maximum" might. And you can set up 2 squad without a duplicated unit. And you can fight until you 2 of your squad is lost. Something like that.
This would make people have to use more than just their best unit but still can plan a little ahead but still remain a feeling of "Survival" mode.
Actually, I understand the dev, since the reward of complete Dark Tower is high.. but it isn't anymore.. so this needs to change.
I used to be super luck that I draw only Miss Lapin every turn. But most of the time it isn't.

Dark Tower is just the most prominent example of this game's many negative cost/reward and negative difficulty/reward ratios. Too much effort is needed for too little reward.
The grind aspect of the game needs to be rebalanced.

Ladyrockout is right , also even if they happen to be a level or 2 below, you sometimes give them too much of and advantage building wise for the other player to even have a chance to overcome especially if you give them first turn and they immediately bust out a legendary or big epic its very hard if not impossible for a lot of people to come back from that if they dont have the exact card needed to counter(even then its tough). Also way too many server bugs taking away attempts, especially when i hear this has been going on for a long time.

Let's say, it's too random. The challenge isn't coming from the difficulty. When you think you have a right unit, your enemy counter with something crazier or you'll put some unit that makes your opponent gone crazy.
I used to draw 3-4 Miss Lapin in a row. I would like to hear what is my opponent would say.
However to be honest, I did complete Dark Tower a few time lately. It is not that bad that you can't win at all.
Still, this arena should be revised to make it more chellenge and fun like Journey.
My workaround for now that you have to upgrade most of your unit to make all of them stronger. It's actually help a lot.

Dark Tower isn't impossible to beat, however it becomes really annoying when the game gives you the hand with your worst legendaries against the best cards of the opponents.
In some matches that's all you get, resulting in a brutal defeat. I agree with sealpart, it's too random and gets worse when you have many cards.
A good way to adjust this is to change the Dark Tower behaviour to a Draft Mode.
For those who doesn't know what a Draft mode is in trading card games, you simply build up your deck at the start with random picks.
With a Draft mode in Dark Tower, a player could select one of 4 randomly generated cards from your card pool. Every deck you make is balanced, because you (and everyone else) would have a Common card pick x2, a Rare card pick x2, and Epic x2 and Legendary pick x2, making the total of 8 card picks before the Dark Tower matches.
To keep this interesting, you can have 2 copies of the same card if you're lucky enough to get it twice to be picked. You can't have more of them because there's only 2 picks by rarity.

To me the most infuriating about the Dark Tower:
**Fisrt**: too costy *(I mean honestly most of the time investing the same amount of gold elsewhere is more worth it. Wich by the way make some Path of Hero quest a real pain in the ass)*
**Second**: Random crash ruining the run *(It happen to me each run, I basically admitted that I have to play with 2 life and that's it...)*
Madness, crazyness, OP, ... this stuff is okay as long as you don't have to give up a kidney and say thanks to the guy who just rob you. It can't be fair.

> A good way to adjust this is to change the Dark Tower behaviour to a Draft Mode.
>
> For those who doesn't know what a Draft mode is in trading card games, you simply build up your deck at the start with random picks.
> With a Draft mode in Dark Tower, a player could select one of 4 randomly generated cards from your card pool. Every deck you make is balanced, because you (and everyone else) would have a Common card pick x2, a Rare card pick x2, and Epic x2 and Legendary pick x2, making the total of 8 card picks before the Dark Tower matches.
>
+1

You dont need draft mode at all.....You can still keep it random but you need to stop just grouping ppl in together by ratings in pvp. You can do this by a pt system of the players cards plus thier lvl of hps for the character they are using. you can set ranges of battles within so many pts to make it fair. its simple and easy...plus you need to rewrite the algorithm. there is no way its completely random as you can go into some battles and just get constant garbage or you can go into others and get all the right cards. If it was completely random this would happen like 1 in 1 million battles. Because you dont know squat about the word random or gameplay you have tinkered with something that makes it so it isnt random

Dark Tower isn't hard at all, you just need to keep your cards somewhat even. People use too much of their gold to summon which is a mistake. It's common sense to me as Dark Tower gives you a choich of 4 random cards from your entire deck or "Trunk" if you use tcg/ccg terms. So this means you can't only level cards you use in other game modes, if you can level a card DO It. You don't even have to go out of your way. I do 1 summon for every few cards i upgrade and have had no issue since first unlocking the DT. The mode is fine to me even as a fully f2p player so far. To me it seems pretty random and makes ya think. I guess i'm a minorty as most of you are finding it too hard when i think it's fine.

> *Originally posted by **[McClintick](/forums/732469/topics/899483?page=1#11611961)**:*
> Dark Tower isn't hard at all, you just need to keep your cards somewhat even. People use too much of their gold to summon which is a mistake. It's common sense to me as Dark Tower gives you a choich of 4 random cards from your entire deck or "Trunk" if you use tcg/ccg terms. So this means you can't only level cards you use in other game modes, if you can level a card DO It. You don't even have to go out of your way. I do 1 summon for every few cards i upgrade and have had no issue since first unlocking the DT. The mode is fine to me even as a fully f2p player so far. To me it seems pretty random and makes ya think. I guess i'm a minorty as most of you are finding it too hard when i think it's fine.
I assume you're new/lower level league. I'm at league 9/rank 80 at the moment, and I got around 3 legendaries, and I end up against people with more hp and like full legendary at lvl 5-7+ decks, constantly.
I used to like DT a lot until I got to where I am now. I don't think I'm that bad at the game either or that stupid, but it's just impossible to get past 3-4 wins in DT for me.

Actually, Dark Tower is very fun if you have a strong "overall" units. In general, I made at least 3/7 to at most 5/7 every day. On some lucky day I made 6/7. But it is hard to finish the Dark Tower. Considering, you could lost to "out of memory" error once. But I agree, most of the annoying thing is Path of Heroes that required you to win Dark Tower. I am at "wins in Dark Tower 5 time". And I am at 0/5 at the moment. To go far in Dark Tower is not that hard but to complete it is another story.
It is possible to win, yes. Because I did it before. But I can say that I am very very very lucky to do that. Like pulling Miss Lapin 4 turns in a row. So nothing can stop me.
I think Path of Heroes that require you to win Dark Tower is very hard. If it changes into just win a Dark Tower match for something like 50 times that would be alright I guess. Because to complete Dark Tower, you need 7/7 wins. If you did so good like 6/7 wins which is already very good. But this quest won't care if you did "almost" there, you only need to be perfect. Unless like other Path of Heroes tasks, those other tasks need to you to step by step doing it.

Here’s my take on DT after playing the game after 6+ weeks:
Thesis: While it is often a source of player frustration and rage quitting (which is obviously a big problem for the dev team) with game experience, DT can be highly rewarding, in both terms of actual rewards and playing enjoyment.
The key – and hard part – is knowing where you’re at in the game.
As a new player, DT was glorious as both me and my opponent had equally noob decks, which allowed me to frequently get all 7 wins. Which was great, only it set me up for unrealistic expectations for what was to come.
Namely, I bought the starter packs, which gave me access to several legendary cards and (relatively) sky-rocketed my might. Now, I was able to advance through a bunch of arena leagues, which was lovely, except now all of sudden DT became near impossible. The reason being that my opponent not only also had legendaries, but *significantly* better epics and rares – They had simply been playing the game longer and had time to level and bind them.
This was the sad time for me and DT, as all I could do was begin min-maxing my deck. I picked a handful of epics and a dozen rares that I would spend all my energy and resources on developing.
And with time, I also realized DT was wholly divorced from the arena. One of the frustrating problems players face is that they league-up in the arena only to then get crushed in DT. Sometimes it seems like a seesaw: I can play the arena and win and go up-up-up only to have to come down-down-down to get my DT chests.
For example, while I could boost my team and finally hit league 5 in the arena, I would have to drop back all the way back to league 9 – 10 to get 7 wins on DT. It took a while to understand and accept this.
And so Skoottak-- and almost all new players -- it sucks, but it's the game mechanic: if your opponent has 2000 more might, you are punching way above your weight and need to derank if you want to pwn DT. Again, it took me a while to accept this, but the Arena and DT have significntly different levels of difficulties. And honestly, I'm starting to kind of like the fact.
FWIW, DT gets easier with experience and after you’ve jacked up a bunch of epics and rares. (If you’re new, you stop drawing commons in DT at league 10.)
My biggest concern is that we – both the developers and active player base who like this game—are turning off too many new players.
PS: If it wasn’t clear, I am a small-potatoes cash player; I’m not sure how my experience maps onto f2p, but would be interested to hear. (I would love to hear from McClintick.)

I'm not a new player. Deranking doesn't change your opponents, at least not in league 1 or GM. It's based on your highest squad might so that lowering your might won't change your opponents either. Only way to beat Dark Tower is paying so much money you can't get stronger opponents anymore.
I think Dark Tower is supposed to be unfair. It's only supposed to make you pay money. It used to be possible to beat, but then devs changed it constantly to favor p2w players, they took away common cards because p2w players had lower level commons.

@bunny24
Actually, I think DT enemies get their card levels artificially inflated. The person you're playing doesn't actually have their cards leveled that much. This essentially makes balancing DT easy because all you have to do is not overlevel enemies' cards so much.
DT is a challenge and it should be. But if devs want to keep it at the same difficulty level, they need to remove the "get 7 wins in DT X times" quests. I sure as hell won't be completing those in my lifetime.

> *Originally posted by **[Skootak](/forums/732469/topics/899483?page=1#11656111)**:*
> Deranking doesn't change your opponents, at least not in league 1 or GM.
You obviously need to derank then to league 2 or league 3.
I curently have 5100 might. DT in league 1 is hopeless; DT in league 3 is 7 wins.
I do not consider this "unfair," but simply part of the game that I understand and accept.